Keep digging

Two and a half weeks and two seminars later the question arises ‘what have I learned’. Just a pick from trivial facts: the Friday of Ascension weekend is bad for travelling, short haired man burn their heads in the sun and the lever I used was not for the gas tank, but for the hood of the car.

More related to Systema: first the seminar by Konstantin Komarov in Belgium shed light on my poor state of basic skills such as breathing and moving on the ground. After a more ‘applicable’ day with fun things such as knives and guns I noticed how easy it is to loose track on basics and end up in ‘just trying to take the gun away’.

Maxim Franz’ seminar in Groningen two weeks later could have been too fast after the first seminar if it had not been that many elements of Konstantin’s seminar returned in a different form at the second weekend. Obviously again attention for basics, but also the use of stretching the body and body parts during the work.

To keep things short, here are the three main points I (re)learned during these seminars. Unfortunately I have to admit that I have learned them before, and might have to learn them again:

Do the exercise properly. This is quite hard and I guess more than 90% of the work.
What am I supposed to do during the drill? Should not be too difficult when you pay attention, but apparently this is not my strong point.
What am I supposed to learn during the drill? This is rather difficult because often you won’t find out until you ‘get it’. Paying attention again helps, so does asking questions.
Dump my ego that likes to just throw people around and hit them hard and doesn’t like to fail at those things.

Work more on the basics. There are a billion ways to do this, but integrating it in daily life is surprisingly easy.
I breath all day and night. Might as well pay attention to it.
During the day my body has some kind of posture most of the time. Might as well pay attention to it.
Usually some movement occurs as well……
And of course tension is everywhere….